Fred Gilbert began his career in the Maine woods working for his father in the
1880's, struck out on his own in partnership with (among others) McNulty and
Stetson, and then in 1900 went to work for the Great Northern Paper Company as
vice-president and chief of the Spruce Wood Department until 1928 when he was
succeeded by Bill Hilton.

Scope and Contents:

Papers relating to the logging industry in Maine and the Great Northern Paper
Company. Included are items concerned with harvesting, stumpage, and logging
operations, Also correspondence with Great Northern’s President, Garret Schenck.

The
papers are a rich source of information on the Great Northern paper company
woods operations in the first quarter of the century. Gilbert's extensive
correspondence with Company President Garret Schenck details all aspects of
Gilbert's work in the woods as well as his efforts to lobby Augusta in favor of
the company.

The
various notebooks seem to be the only material in the collection that date from
Gilbert's activities prior to his work for Great Northern. They are various
memorandum, laborers' time, day and account books from Gilbert's logging
partnerships with Stetson and McNulty in the late 1880's and 1890's

Notes on Arrangement:

The papers themselves are not arranged, but preserve much of Gilbert's original
filing system, with letters filed by letter of author/recipient and then bunched
by year. Such personal correspondence comprises the bulk of the collection.
Individuals with whom he communicated frequently had their correspondence in
separate files, one for each year. Probably the best example of this filing
system are the many large files containing Gilbert's correspondence both
in-coming and out-going, with Garret Schenck and his successor William Whitcomb.

Mixed in with the letters are a great number of files. While it's difficult to
characterize this miscellaneous material, much of it consists of file folders,
broken down by township, containing surveyor's reports, and often cruising maps
and logging plans. There are also important reports prepared for the company on
the Grand Falls, NB power project, the proposed Quebec extension railroad across
Northern Maine, and other matters.

Files sorted Alpha, refers to those letters for which Gilbert's filing system
remains intact. In other cases, letters have been lumped together by year, or,
in some cases, just stuffed in loose, without any apparent order.

Arrangement:

Arranged as per Gilbert, although the order of boxes has been adjusted to bring
like materials together.

Finding Aids for selected manuscript
collections in the Special Collections Department at Fogler Library are
accessible online in URSUS, in a browsable
Guide to Manuscript
Collections. Please contact Special Collections at spc@umit.maine.edu
or (207) 581-1686 for further information.